fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice…

When putting together performance reviews, one almost has to neglect first time mistakes. After all, we’re all human, and we all make mistakes. Part of the improvement process that everyone has is that we learn from our mistakes (or the mistakes of others), and we try not to commit them in the future. Repeated mistakes are the stuff that tarnish performance reviews. This, of course, shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone (at least I hope not).

As I recall, the London Olympics were lauded to be the best games in terms of long-term sustainability for venues. One of the primary objectives was to avoid the pitfalls of Athens and Beijing, where most permanent Olympic venues were falling into a state of disrepair due to the fact that nobody was using them. This created long term sustainability issues for the host cities. The London games were going to be the end of that Olympic trend. They would achieve this through the use of newly built venues, existing facilities and temporary facilities. Some of the new facilities will be reused in their Olympic form, while others will be reduced in size and several will be moved elsewhere in the UK. The idea is that there would be no unwanted venues after the games.

Well, this morning there was an article in the NYT about the London Olympic stadiums falling into disuse. It’s been six months since the Olympics have ended, and the future of the main Olympic Stadium has yet to be determined. The original plan is now being deemed as faulty, as the original plan to downsize the stadium and use it as a venue for track & field competitions with room for 25,000 seats. When has a regional track & field event ever drawn more than a few thousand people?

As far as I can tell, London Olympic organizers are falling into the same pit that the preceding cities had fallen into. After all that pomp and hot-air about sustainability, we’re seeing pretty much the same issue repackaged for a different city. Hopefully Rio will have a better plan for 2016. Given the current trend, I’m not too optimistic.